Gender Divisions and Gender Policies in Top Finnish Corporations

Abstract

The expansion of transnational corporations is a fundamental part of contemporary globalising processes. Through their activities, transnational corporations also have impacts on national and cultural gender relations, thus highlighting that gender relations are indeed amenable, to some extent, to social change. Accordingly, large transnational corporations have many effects and implications for gender relations in society, as well as having their own gender relations within them, characteristically in the form of men’s far greater presence in management than women’s. A key aspect in the functioning of transnational corporations is thus the way they organise and restructure gender relations within their own activities.
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\nThe research presented here on gender divisions and gender policies in largest Finnish multinational and national corporations is part of a longer-term examination of the relations of gender relations in transnational corporations. It sets out the results of a survey of the largest 100 Finnish corporations with regard to the following main kinds of question:
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\n· general information on the corporation’s size, sector and economic activities;
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\n· the gender composition of their employment, middle management, top management, and board;
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\n· their gender equality plans and related policies.
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\nThe human resources manager or their equivalent or delegate of 62 corporations responded to the survey. The general analysis of the data obtained from the survey is presented in this research report.
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\nSpecial attention is given to relations between the gender divisions and the gender policies of corporations. Interpretations of the data and more general theoretical implications are discussed in the report, with special attention to theoretical ways forward.